Arches National Park Hiking: Best Trails to Delicate Arch and Beyond

Arches National Park contains more than 2,000 named stone arches within 76,000 acres. That’s the highest concentration of natural arches anywhere on the planet. Delicate Arch is the one everyone photographs, the image on the Utah license plate, the subject of a hundred thousand Instagram posts. It’s worth seeing. But treating Arches as a quick detour to photograph one arch misses what the park actually offers.

Spend a full day and hit the Windows Section, Devils Garden, and Park Avenue alongside Delicate Arch. That’s 8 to 10 miles across four completely different terrain types. That’s what makes Arches a real day in the desert rather than a 90-minute landmark stop.

Timed Entry: What’s Changed Since 2022

The park added a timed entry reservation system starting in 2022, and it’s still in effect. From April through October, you need a reservation to enter during peak hours. Without one, you may be turned away at the gate.

Reservations cost $2 per vehicle on top of the $35 park entrance fee. They go on sale at recreation.gov on a rolling 3-day advance window, with a new day opening each morning at 6am Mountain Time. For spring and fall visits, book the moment that window opens. Reservations go fast on weekends.

From November through March, no reservation is needed. That’s one more reason fall and winter are the right times to visit.

The Six Best Trails

Delicate Arch

The signature hike is 3.2 miles round trip with 480 feet of gain. It starts at Wolfe Ranch, a 19th-century homestead at the trailhead. Take five minutes to look at the nearby Ute petroglyphs on the sandstone panel before you start. They’re easy to miss, and they predate the homestead by centuries.

The trail crosses open slickrock and follows cairns. The first mile is gradual. The second mile traverses an open bowl before narrowing to a ledge approach. That final ledge is 3 to 4 feet wide in some spots, with a steep drop into the bowl on the right. The arch appears at the end of the ledge, 52 feet tall and 32 feet wide, framing a view of the La Sal Mountains behind it.

Best light: the last two hours before sunset, when the arch glows orange-red. Best crowds: arrive before 8am in any season. Best overall visit: a clear morning in October.

There is no shade on this trail. None. Plan accordingly.

Windows Section

The Windows Section is the most efficient place in the park for arch density per mile walked. North Window and South Window, two massive arches in the same rock fin, are visible from the parking area. The loop trail to both is about 1 mile with minimal elevation change.

Double Arch is 0.5 miles round trip from a separate trailhead in the same parking lot. Two arches share a common base rock, one of the largest arch spans in the park. The combined Windows and Double Arch walk takes about 90 minutes and covers three major arches with almost no climbing.

The Windows parking area also catches the best sunset light. North Window faces west, and the late afternoon sun lights up the interior of the arch from the front. If you’re only doing one late-afternoon stop, this is it.

Landscape Arch and Devils Garden

Landscape Arch is 1.9 miles round trip from the Devils Garden trailhead at the end of the 18-mile main park road. The trail is nearly flat and well-marked. Landscape Arch spans 306 feet, which makes it one of the longest natural arches in the world. A large section fell in 1991, and what remains is a ribbon of rock that narrows to about 6 feet thick at the center.

The trail continues past Landscape Arch on the primitive loop, adding 4 more miles and about 500 feet of gain to reach seven additional arches including Dark Angel and Double O Arch. On a clear October morning when the trailhead isn’t already full by 9am, the full primitive loop is worth every extra step.

Start early. The Devils Garden trailhead is the farthest point in the park, but it fills up by mid-morning in peak season.

Fiery Furnace Guided Tour

Fiery Furnace is a tight maze of red sandstone fins, narrow canyons, and dead-end passages. The park restricts self-guided entry because hikers get completely lost inside and require rescue on a regular basis. A self-guided permit exists but requires watching a video and paying a fee, and the permit still doesn’t get you into the deeper sections.

The ranger-guided tour is the right way to do it. The tour runs 2 to 3 hours, covers about 1.5 miles, costs $16 per person, and goes into sections of the labyrinth you can’t reach on your own. It books out weeks in advance in spring and fall. Reserve at recreation.gov as soon as you have your travel dates.

This is the most unusual terrain in the park. Nothing else at Arches looks or feels like the interior of Fiery Furnace.

Park Avenue

Park Avenue is 2 miles round trip with 320 feet of gain, or 1 mile one-way if you arrange a car shuttle. It’s the first major stop driving into the park, and most visitors treat it as a quick photo pull-off rather than a walk. That’s a mistake.

The trail descends into a canyon between massive sandstone fins that rise 300 feet on both sides. The fins are flat-faced and vertical, which is where the Manhattan comparison comes from. Formations like the Three Gossips and the Organ rise above the canyon walls. Morning light hits the east wall directly. If you start the day at Park Avenue before 8am, you’ll likely have the trail to yourself.

Courthouse Towers Viewpoint

The shortest stop in the park is also the easiest orientation point. The 0.3-mile viewpoint walk from the parking area looks up at Tower of Babel and Three Gossips from the canyon floor. No significant climbing. Good for anyone who needs a short walk to get their bearings before committing to longer trails, or for families with young kids who need an accessible first stop.

What You Need to Know Before You Go

Timed entry: Required April through October. Reserve at recreation.gov, 3 days ahead, 6am MT. Cost is $2/vehicle plus the $35 entrance fee. No reservation required November through March.

Slickrock heat: The rock surface runs 30 to 40 degrees hotter than the air temperature. A 95°F afternoon means the slickrock surface is 125 to 135°F. Don’t sit on it in summer, and don’t underestimate how fast it drains your water supply.

Water: There are no water sources on any trail in Arches. Carry everything you need. For any hike over 2 miles in summer, that means at least 3 liters per person.

Camping: Devils Garden Campground is the only campground in the park. 51 sites, books 6 months out for spring and fall. Set a recreation.gov alert the moment your dates are certain.

Moab: The town is 5 miles from the park entrance and has lodging at every price point. March through May requires advance booking of 3 to 6 months. October fills quickly too.

The One-Day Plan

Arrive at the park gate when it opens, typically 7am. Start with Park Avenue for the morning light in the canyon. Drive to the Windows Section next, while parking is still manageable. Walk the Windows loop and Double Arch, then grab a late breakfast in your car.

Mid-morning, drive to Devils Garden and do the Landscape Arch trail, with the primitive loop extension if you’re feeling strong. Head back to Wolfe Ranch by 3pm. Hike Delicate Arch in the late afternoon for the last two hours of warm light.

That sequence covers four terrain types, roughly 8 to 10 miles total, and hits Delicate Arch at the only time of day when the light is actually good. The arch in flat midday sun is a different experience from the arch glowing at golden hour.

Go in late September or October. The crowds thin, the temperatures drop to the 70s, and you won’t spend the whole day rationing water.

One more thing worth knowing: the arches are not permanent. Landscape Arch lost a large section in 1991. Wall Arch, a span on the Devils Garden primitive loop, collapsed in 2008. The park service estimates Delicate Arch has decades to centuries left before the thin fin supporting it gives way. Every visit is a snapshot of something in the process of disappearing.